THE Scottish Government’s white paper for an independent Scotland released in 2013 “was not a blueprint for a new nation” because it focused too much on what one party would’ve done with new powers, a leading Yes campaigner has said.
Scotland’s Future was billed by then-first minister Alex Salmond as the “most comprehensive blueprint for an independent country ever published” when it was revealed to the world almost 11 years ago.
But Robin McAlpine, head of strategic development for the pro-independence think tank Common Weal, said rather than being a “blueprint for an independent country” it was instead a “programme for government” – focusing on what one political party would have done after independence if it was elected into power.
Instead, McAlpine insisted it should’ve contained clear answers for how Scotland gets from a Yes vote to independence, ensuring the country can be run by any political party that is democratically elected to form a government.
“It [the white paper] wasn’t dreadful for what it was, but it was a programme for government, not a blueprint for a new nation,” McAlpine told The National.
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“The white paper was an all-government, every-policy statement of what one political party would have done with the powers of Scottish independence after it happened. That tells us nothing about how to deliver independence.
“We needed a blueprint for a new nation, and we still do.
“If you don’t need to do it, don’t put it in the white paper.”
‘The problem began in the 1990s’
McAlpine said the content of the white paper was “adequate in the circumstances” because years of work, that he believes should have been done on independence once the devolution settlement came into place, had not been done.
By the time 2011 came around and a referendum was announced, a vision for a new nation had to be drawn up in 18 months and so was largely focused on devolved policy – what civil servants in the Scottish government knew about – and not enough on the architecture of how you build an independent nation in the first place.
McAlpine (below) said a pro-independence think tank should have been set up as soon as it was clear a Scottish Parliament was to be formed in the 1990s.
He said: “No work had been done had been done on independence as a serious policy subject […] since the SNP’s policy papers in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”
He went on: “Once the devolution settlement was set, the SNP should’ve been building a model for independence. If you want to use the Scottish Parliament as a stepping stone, you have to develop a map for where the next stepping stone is.
“Because of where we were, the white paper was never going to be a triumphant work. It was too late. The Scottish civil service does not contain within it monetary economists. It’s not a devolved area.
“If you say to a group of civil servants ‘write a manifesto for an independent Scotland’, which is what they were really tasked to do, they are going to do what they know how to do which is devolved policy.
“So what you ended up with was a programme for government.”
‘The door should’ve been left open’
A programme for government is not policy neutral. It contains within it ideas that a specific party believes in, and for McAlpine this was a huge problem with the white paper.
Even after a Yes vote, Scotland would still potentially be years away from being independent and electing its own government, so he questioned why policies on areas like education were even being spoken about.
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McAlpine said any policy mentioned in the white paper should’ve been able to work as well in a Tory government as it would in a socialist government, and if it didn’t, it shouldn’t have been in there – which is a rule Common Weal put in place when it released its own white paper How To Start a New Country: A Practical Guide for Scotland.
“You don’t vote for independence based on a programme for government for the government you will elect three years later,” he said:
“If you look at figures, 20% of Reform voters are pro-independence, 10% of the Scottish Tory voters are pro-independence. If you want them [on your side], you must leave the door open for their hopes for their country.
“We had a rule for How to Start a New Country and that was it had to be policy neutral. Whatever we say we need to do in this book, it must work equally well if the First Minister is a Tory or is a socialist.
“We cannot write policy when we design the architecture of a new country. If it doesn’t facilitate any political party from becoming the government, we are not in the right place.”
‘The question was how, not what’
The question for the white paper to answer was never what the country was going to look like after independence, it was how do we get there in the first place, said McAlpine.
“What the white paper was bad at was saying ‘here’s the detail of the architecture that takes us to day one of independence’. Here’s how we’ll set up the borders, currency, payment systems. Here’s what we’re going to do to start to build up our defence, here’s how we’re going to build a tax system.
“There’s a big difference between how you build a boat and where you go in it. They [the Scottish Government] said ‘here’s where we’re going in the boat’. But when people asked ‘how you are you building it?’, they said ‘Oh well we’ll worry about that later’.
“The question was never what education policy will we have in six years’ time. The question was always ‘are we changing currency, if so, how do teachers get paid?’
No more hard deadlines
As well as any future white paper having a laser-sharp focus on the architecture of building an independent nation, McAlpine said the blueprint should only contain notional deadlines.
Scotland’s Future proclaimed the negotiations for independence would take around 18 months, but McAlpine said Scotland should not back itself into a corner with hard deadlines.
“The faster your negotiate, the more you have to give up. If you’ve set a hard deadline, you’ll have to start compromising before they do,” he told The National.
“So I say don’t set yourself hard deadlines, set yourself notional deadlines and give yourself time.”
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